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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29125422">Phantom Pains</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeanjacketcoolcat/pseuds/jeanjacketcoolcat'>jeanjacketcoolcat</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman - All Media Types, Danny Phantom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Crossover, Gen, Lazarus Pit (DCU)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 05:53:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,756</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29125422</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeanjacketcoolcat/pseuds/jeanjacketcoolcat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny fights the ghost of Captain Hook and ends up in a Lazarus Pit.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>149</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. second star to the right and straight on 'til morning</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Procrastination's 'great'. I wrote this instead of homework.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Nanda Parabat is the place where dreams and nightmares come true: where assassins are born and immortality is forged from some impossible combination of twisted laws of physics melded with something like magic that culminated in pure madness.</p><p>Daniel Fenton had never heard of Nanda Parabat. Daniel Fenton did not live in a world where Nanda Parabat existed. He lived in Amity Park where a portal to the Ghost World existed in the basement of his parents' house. Built by some combination of ingenious engineering and crackpot mad science, it's functionality stood as a monument to sheer coincidence and blind hope. Jack  Fenton's hope, Maddie Fenton's scientific prowess and Danny Fenton's unlucky habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on who you asked.</p><p>If you asked Danny, he'd certainly say he was living a cursed life and getting pretty damned tired of it, too. Although he might not use the word cursed. Since the genesis of the Ghost Portal, he'd painstakingly learned that curses were actually real. And while it certainly <em>felt</em>, at times, like he was shackled to a fate of never-ending misery, he hadn't actually been <em>cursed</em> to it. He still had a choice and the free will to exercise it.</p><p>It was currently being used against a swashbuckling buccaneer with an outrageous handlebar moustache. The ghost had escaped from the portal and phased through the house to terrorize passersby with strident demands of a ship supposedly under his command.</p><p>"Stand and fight, you brigand!" The ghostly figure of a long-coated pirate yelled as he brandished his sword with a grandstanding, extravagant flourish.</p><p>Danny sighed and reached for the thermos he'd taken to carrying with him wherever he went. Fenton-made (Jack) and Fenton[-accidentally]-fixed-to-work (Danny), it was a thing of utilitarian simplicity and deceptive normality.</p><p>"Can't exactly stand when you're ten feet in the air," Danny quipped as he unscrewed the top and pointed the Fenton thermos in the general direction of the now apoplectic ghost-pirate. "Why don't you come down here?" He clicked the operating button and felt the thermos juddering to life in his palm.</p><p>"Insolent boy!" Ghost-pirate yelled, "I am Captain James Hook of the Jolly Roger and will stoop to no blithering half-witted babe in--"</p><p>Danny fired the button and watched dispassionately as "Captain James Hook's" intricately embroidered coattails were sucked into the shooting electric blue beam of plasma ray. His buggy eyeballs bulged out of his ghostly pale skull and his face elongated to a structure of impossible proportions that looked more bovine than sapien. The Captain had reached knee height submergence into the thermos when a high, sharp voice called out, "<em>En garde</em>!"</p><p>A bright bolt of  fluorescent green light catapulted Captain James Hook out of the tight blue radial of the Fenton Thermos's plasma ray. The two ectoplasmic beings hurtled towards the Fenton Works Emergency Op Centre satellite tower in an elliptical sphere of spinning ghost light.</p><p>Danny groaned from deep in his chest and steeled himself to chase after the Captain and his interloping rescuer. "It's this or English homework." Danny said to himself under his breath. He stopped and genuinely contemplated the five page essay waiting for him then shook his head.</p><p>"I can't be possessed with the spirit of Mr. Lancer because he's not a ghost." Danny reassured himself as he ran up the front steps of his house, shuddering at the thought. He'd left the front door open in his haste to get to the escaped ghost before it wreaked too much havoc. Still on ghost-fighting auto-pilot, he started going ghost in the front hall when he realized even though he couldn't see anyone, it wasn't the best idea he'd ever had so he jumped into the hall closet. Going ghost and phasing through the three stories of his house, he caught sight of his Dad wrestling with the prototype of a Fenton Toaster in the kitchen, his Mom in the home office, sorting through their patent documents and Jazz in her bedroom, writing in her journal, before hitting the Fenton Emergency Op Centre on the roof.</p><p>"Alright, Captain Fancy Pants," Danny started, Fenton Thermos in hand, charged and ready.<br/>
"Time to walk the plank."</p><p>"Who is this ninny, Hook?" A voice that belonged to a boy several years younger than him, dressed in vines and holding a short sword to Hook's rapier shouted.</p><p>"<em>Ninny</em>!?" Danny shouted back, unaccountably offended and amused in equal measure. "When are you from?"</p><p>"I'm from--wait, that's not a question people ask!" The boy retorted and clashed his sword against Hook's rapier with a deft movement that sent the pirate wavering backwards in the air.</p><p>"What do you mean, that's not a question?! I asked it, didn't I?!" Danny responded, irritated, hand on the button trigger of the Fenton Thermos, itching to press it but mindful of the waning charge. He started calculating how best to aim his shot so he could capture both of them in one blast.</p><p>"Well, you asked it <em>wrong</em>!" The boy gave a particularly complicated parry to Hook's fencing offensive, sending the pair of them circling around the satellite dented from their earlier collision.</p><p>"Did <em>not</em>!" Danny shouted, aggravated as he tried to get a clear shot.</p><p>"Did <em>too</em>!" The boy shouted back, flitting between the bent and sparking metal poles of the damaged satellite and its faintly smoking power source underneath, making faces at the pirate chasing him.</p><p>"<em>Insufferable brats</em>!!!" Hook roared with a rage so intense he looked unhinged. It turned his eyes a vibrant red that matched his coat and bled from the iris into the veins of his eyeballs and then rapidly through the rest of him until he was a glowing red humanoid shape of ectoplasmic energy that fizzled and grew with volatile spikes of crimson light.</p><p>It sent the vine-wrapped boy on a cautious defensive. Danny pressed the momentary lapse in movement to fire up the Fenton Thermos, aiming it at the more volatile of the pair, hoping to capture him before anything more destructive could occur.</p><p>If it had happened in a movie, Danny swore this was the part that would've been in slow motion. He fired the plasma ray right as the boy jabbed his sword into Hook, The action pushed the incensed pirate back into the still sparking satellite tower just as the smoking power source beneath it set aflame. The disparate volatile energies converged: the red ectoplasm of Captain Hook bubbled up like an erupting volcano, seemingly fed by the fire growing beneath him and fused with the electricity lacing the satellite tower to make a frighteningly large plume of smoking, crackling, destructive, ectoplasmically-fuelled energy.</p><p>The Fenton Thermos plasma ray connected to Hook, the epicentre of it all, with a booming explosion of searing white heat and sound and force that sent Danny flying, only to hit the building two streets over; flattened against its brick exterior for a second or less before it pulled him back. It was almost magnetic, how he peeled away from the wall on a reverse trajectory back to the roof of Fenton Works. It felt like there were hooks in the marrow of his bones, siphoning his essence back to what had turned into a swirling, hurricane-like vortex atop his house.</p><p>Danny's legs and arms and torso turned to string that stretched thin like a piece of gum between disparate, ever-expanding points until he thought it would reach a point where they snapped. No matter how hard Danny struggled, he couldn't escape the pull to the eye of the storm. The more he fought, the weaker he felt and the harder it became to stay conscious. He lost the battle.</p><p>***</p><p>The world he wakes up to is murky and nebulous. Everything is a myriad of unidentifiable shapes and muted, sickeningly familiar verdurous colours. The pain he felt being sucked into the vortex has been transmuted into pressure at every point that throbbed rather than stabbed and pounded to the beat of a heart that alerted him he was very much <em>alive</em>. He tries to take a breath and chokes on liquid that fills his mouth and throat. He thrashes up and breaks the surface of a green, glowing pool of something thicker than water. He heaves and coughs up what feels like a lung on top of all the liquid he'd inhaled.</p><p>There is a woman who pulls him out of the pool. She wipes his limbs off with a towel and then wraps him in a robe. Her hair is dark and her skin is brown where the murky green, glowing light of the pools illuminates her face, casting it in eerie shadows. Her eyes are a piercing, electric green that bore into his own, reminding him uncannily of the first time he'd turned on the Ghost Portal. Her voice is rich and cultured when she says, "You are revived. I am Talia. I will help you."</p><p>Danny opens his mouth to ask what in the holy heck is going on and how she knows him, when she puts her hand on his shoulder and says, softer and more urgently than before, "It's alright. I promise you. You are healed. But we must move quickly for there are those who would not see you restored and will hurt you for it. Come." Talia moves to help him stand, hands careful and Danny follows on autopilot, stiff and slow. The robe falls from his shoulders and, though Talia is quick to catch it, Danny still manages a glimpse of what it had previously covered. He freezes.</p><p>This is not his body.</p><p>It is <em>covered</em> in scars.</p><p>Talia is talking to him. Danny can vaguely hear the sound of her voice but it is subsumed by a buzzing sound filling his ears.</p><p>This is not his body and it <em>hurts</em> to be in it.</p><p>Danny doesn't even think before he's working to phase himself out of the poor guy's aching being and finds, alarmingly, that he can't. Every attempt leaves the body hurting, the limbs shaking, the heart pumping just that much harder and a haze of green envelops his entire being in jagged spikes of mind-numbing pain. When he comes back to himself, he finds he's flat on his back and the aches have returned with a razor-sharp vengeance, multiplied tenfold for the effort.</p><p>The woman's face floats in his hazy vision and her voice feels like it's coming from a thousand miles away.<br/>
"<em>Jason</em>?" Talia says, her brow furrowing. "Jason, <em>focus</em>. You have to <em>breathe</em>."</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This was inspired by a recent binge in Danny Phantom/Batman crossovers of which the two best were: Lazarus Green Eyes by Keetajet and The Phantom and The Knight by savja398. I didn't come across exactly this take so even though I'm not the best writer, I couldn't resist at least trying.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Baduns</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Danny and the League of Assassins.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>guess who spent reading week writing fic instead of essays? definitely not beta read.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Danny'd taken a page out of Tucker's PDA organization and come to several conclusions:</p><p>1. He was hallucinating.<br/>
2. He was in a coma.<br/>
3. He really was actually dead this time and<br/>
     a. this was the afterlife.<br/>
     b. he'd been reincarnated.<br/>
4. The vortex was a portal and he'd jumped to<br/>
     a. another dimension, or<br/>
     b. another reality. or<br/>
     c. the future?<br/>
5. He'd been literally cursed. Again.</p><p>Danny's currently trying to spear a canid-type creature with a sharpened branch, so all five are viable possibilities at this point. Survival training in Nanda Parabat is a trial by fire. After Talia had fished him out of what she later called a "Lazarus Pit" (Sam would be incensed to know the bible exists everywhere) she'd pulled him up a mountain then stuck him in what felt like pyjamas and told him she'd be back in a month. Presumably to deal with what was left of him judging by what he'd been thrown into.</p><p>"Just stick it with a sword." The lanky man beside him grunted, tucking a makeshift slingshot into the waistband of his trousers.<br/>
"Idiot." The stout man to his other side muttered disdainfully, nevertheless fingering the sheathed dagger at his waist though ultimately not drawing it.<br/>
"It's not idiotic if it works."<br/>
"It <em>is</em> idiotic if it kills you."<br/>
"It's only idiotic if you actually die."<br/>
"If it kills you, you're already dead, moron."<br/>
"Not if you survive."<br/>
"How do you survive if you're already de--"</p><p>They both fall abruptly silent and give Danny a not-so-subtle side eye. It's the worst-kept secret that he'd been dipped in the glowing green pits, apparently against the explicit wishes of the leader of this murder cult. Some guy called R'as who Danny hasn't met and doesn't ever want to. </p><p>"If you two <em>shut it</em>, we can maybe catch some grub before they kill us for dying." Danny hisses through gritted teeth and the man's lips twitch. </p><p>"Y'hear that, Jasper?" The tall man asks, grinning like a hyena, "Todd, here, agrees with me!"</p><p>"And isn't that a ringing endorsement." Jasper mutters, aggravation bleeding through every word.<br/>
"What's that supposed to mean?" The tall man responds, a barely discernible sharp edge colouring his words.<br/>
"It <em>means</em>, Horace," Jasper's words bite like piranhas, getting vicious as his tone goes so low that Danny can barely hear it when he continues, "that the <em>zombie</em> over there, agreeing with you, is <em>not</em> something to boast about."</p><p>Danny lets the improvised spear fly. It sails through the air. Whistling. Spinning. The animal bolts, escaping without a scratch and the sharpened stick is lost in the long grass. Jasper snorts and Danny drops his head in defeat, balling his hands into fists out of frustration.</p><p>"Bad luck," Horace says, patting his back as he heads towards the thicket behind them. "Another <em>berry</em> fruity night, eh?" He chortles wearily before wrestling with the dense foliage.</p><p>Danny groans at the pun and turns to follow Horace meanwhile Jasper starts digging in the dirt with the hilt of his sheathed blade, the beginnings of a fire pit forming. A smile tugs at his lips as Danny watches a springy bramble wallop Horace right between the eyes. He doesn't see it come back around. It hits him smack upside the head so hard that he crashes into Horace who lets out a high-pitched scream. </p><p>"<em>Oi</em>!" Horace recovers pretty well, dropping at least two octaves to chide Danny.</p><p>Danny stiffens, eyes darting to Jasper who's still and watchful by the now fully abandoned fire pit. Danny meets Horace's eyes before they also flit towards Jasper. Danny deliberately relaxes and shrugs nonchalantly, saying a bit too loudly, "I guess my <em>zombie</em> <em>brain's</em> affecting my reflexes." </p><p>Horace stares before his eyes widen and he taps the side of his nose conspiratorially saying, also a touch too loudly, "Oh, indubitably, me boy!"<br/>
Horace's tone is droll as he scours the thorny bush for some edible morsels and practically shouts, "Next thing you know, you'll be droolin' for a taste o' me brains!" He winks at Danny before slowly turning his back to forage in a nearby bush.</p><p>Danny sees Jasper freeze from building the firepit in his periphery. He stumbles in his covert surveillance, trips over an exposed root and never recovers. The stumble morphs into a stagger that he drags out into a limp. He lets the drool collect in his mouth and slide down his chin, eyes half-lidded and head tilted like he can barely support it. </p><p>Danny ambles his way towards Horace, stiffens his joints some, holds out his arms like a stereotypical movie monster and <em>pounces</em>. Horace screams like his balls haven't dropped, saying, "He <em>bit</em> me! I've been <em>bit</em>! ... By a <em>zombie</em>!" so dramatically, Danny doesn't think Jasper'll buy the act but he groans unintelligibly anyway, to keep up the charade. His arms are loose about Horace's neck as the man makes a bigger ruckus at <em>looking</em> like he's being attacked than actually getting away. The two of them grapple, falling into moves the intimidating instructors had drilled into them with gruelling discipline.</p><p>"<em>Argh</em>! Ya bugger--!" Horace says under his breath when Danny evades one of his offensive manoeuvres and tightens his hold on Horace's neck in the process. His flailing arm hits Danny elbow-deep in the gut and Danny grunts, "<em>Watch it</em>!"<br/>
Horace's superior weight class pushes Danny back against one of the bushes so he hooks a destabilizing leg around one of Horace's that sends the pair of them tumbling to the earth, still grappling. </p><p> They go down like sacks of potatoes. Danny wheezes when Horace uses him as a cushion for his landing. He gives a vicious jab in the jugular as retaliation and Horace growls in response, "Oh...so you wanna play dirty, eh?"<br/>
Danny grunts, "We're already in the dirt."<br/>
"Aye and you're goin' ta be dust." Horace says through bared teeth but Danny can see the smile threatening to take over. He wriggles his hold until he can ruffle Horace's stringy hair completely out of order. Horace protests this with more vehemence than the initial attack, desperately struggling as he shouts, "<em>Gerroff</em>!!!!"</p><p>And then he's gone, wrenched from Danny's grip so fast it feels like Horace teleported away. Jasper takes his place, heavy build grinding Danny's spine into the ground. Danny can see Horace grinning above them, jeering a little and Danny smiles back. He opens his mouth to join in the ribbing and freezes when the glint of steel catches his eye. Jasper's pulled his knife: blade shining in the soft, orange light of sunset-pressing it close between them.</p><p>Danny can't help it. He reflexively pushes to phase incorporeal and let the blade slide through him. Like he's always done in evasive manoeuvres against his more blood-thirsty adversaries. This time, his flesh stays solid and the blade sticks. His vision narrows and the world tilts. He can't feel his limbs even though he knows, distantly, that he has them. Horace and Jasper float amid the grass, painted a sickly emerald, mouths moving but making no sound. Danny tries to say that he can't hear them. Instead, his mouth fills with the taste of pennies and Horace disappears amid a wave of good, old familiar, ectoplasmic green. </p><p>***</p><p>Danny doesn't wake up so much as come back to full awareness in stages. He feels like he's gone ten rounds with Pariah Dark, then made to sit one of Mr. Lancer's exams: totally done. His muscles ache, his head pounds and from his side emanates a burning pain he feels a vague sort of rancour towards. Words filter in as he realizes he's lying on the cold ground, something soft under his head, and the fire crackling at his marginally warmer feet.  </p><p>"...bloomin' shafted, is what. The lad can't forage worth a tuppence <em>and</em> has these fits, besides..." It's Horace's voice. He sounds frustrated and worried and above all: exhausted. "What're we gonna do with 'im?"</p><p>The fits are a side effect of the Lazarus Pit combined with his dormant or locked or repressed or incompatible ghost powers. Danny hasn't yet sussed out which of those options it actually is and he <em>really</em> needs to because they leave him vulnerable and weak. An inconvenience under normal circumstances; in this case it's a downright fatal liability. It's the reason Jasper hates him and Horace is too nice. It's the reason he's with them at all. </p><p>"You're overlooking the bigger picture." Jasper's voice is tight and measured. "What did we come here for?"<br/>
"To repay a debt?" Horace's answer is met with silence. "Money?" More silence. "Uhhhhh, trainin'?"</p><p>Team selection on that mountaintop temple had been cutthroat. Literally. Danny'd seen several peoples' throats slit and the only reason--according to Jasper--that he'd even made it on a team at all, had been because he was under the mantle of Talia Al Ghul's protection and <em>that</em> <b>meant</b> something. What that something was, Danny had yet to figure out. </p><p>"<em>Immortality</em> you twit!" Jasper snaps.<br/>
Horace makes a noise of epiphanous agreement as Jasper mutters '<em>moron</em>' under his breath.<br/>
"All's we gotta do is make it through the tests then, eh?" Horace offers timidly.<br/>
"Well now, our little stunt got me thinking," Jasper's words are unusually slow, tone conspiratorial, "Kid over there's been dipped in the Pits that <em>make</em> them all immortal, right?"<br/>
"Right." Horace says, "...and...?"<br/>
"<em>And</em>, he's not exactly come out right, has he?" Jasper responds, exasperated. <em><br/>
</em>Horace sighs, "Aye, poor blighter."<br/>
The silence lengthens and Danny cracks open an eye the tiniest of slivers to see the silhouettes of two figures sitting on logs from across a blazing fire.</p><p>When he'd recovered from his first try at going ghost, he'd woken up to Talia, viciously executing what he now knows were several agents of her father's cult. She'd turned to him, blood dripping from her knives and said, "Come along now, Jason. We have much to do." And that had been that. Jason he had been when she'd snuck him through tunnels and up a mountain. Jason he'd been when she'd led him to a small, barren chamber with only a cot and a small table, told him to dress in the training robes and then set the edict to <em>survive</em>. Danny'd sat there for the first few minutes, pinched himself until he had bruises, then conked out. </p><p>"So...what do we do, Jasper?" Horace asks after a long silence.<br/>
"I say we book it."<br/>
"<em>What</em>?! What about the money?"<br/>
"<em>Hang</em> the money! I'm leaving with my brain intact!"<br/>
"<em>Leaving</em>?!"<br/>
"Aye. Listen,"</p><p>By the time Danny'd figured out what was going on, stranded in this strange reality, Talia had been long gone and there wasn't anyone left to tell who gave a shit. Jason or Danny, names didn't really matter when he was reguarly pushed past his physical limits. The instructors all dismissed it as "Pit Madness" when he tried to say he was <span class="u">Danny</span>, <em>not</em> Jason, spouting stoic reassurances that 'the delusions' would fade.<br/>
He'd fallen in with Jasper and Horace by default. No one else had wanted him, come team time, sporting what had been labelled as the unfortunate effects of the Pits. At the same time, no one had the courage to off him with Talia's protection branded bright as a neon sign on his forehead. So he'd shipped off with Horace and Jasper for some more survival training in the valleys surrounding the mountain temple.</p>
<p></p><div>
  <p>Danny tunes back in to Jasper sounding like he's two seconds from stabbing Horace in the gut too.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>"We'll wake ol' Sleepin' Beauty over there, book it down the bloody mountain and hoof it back to civilization pronto."<br/>
"Copy that, boss."<br/>
"How many times have we had to go over this, Horace?! I'm <em>not</em> your--you know what? Never mind, just wake her highness over there."</p>
  <p>"Where to?" Danny asks.<br/>
Horace screams like an opera singer and Jasper falls off the log, swearing. </p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks for all the nice comments last chapter. I don't have any plans for this fic, just having fun. If you want to write your own version of this idea: take this as blanket permission.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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